


flames follow smoke

by oneese



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Greece & Rome, Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Greek and Roman Mythology - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 01:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5272025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneese/pseuds/oneese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ross meets alexandros; that should have been the end of it (it wasn't)</p><p>(or<br/>a classics au with roman ross and greek smith,<br/>tied by a destined fate)</p>
            </blockquote>





	flames follow smoke

**Author's Note:**

> tw: fires, character death (non graphic), blood/war mention
> 
> (crossposted to tumblr)
> 
> (rly hope u guys don't hate me yet with crossposting all my stories)

Rome burns the day Ross leaves. 

He leaves behind a city that has been raised on top of a hill and rebuild on ruins time and time again. He leaves behind a city that has seen more rulers than any other and a city that has seen more blood spilled than anywhere else in the world. He can’t see the crimson that stains the pure, white marble of the stairs, but every Roman knows it’s there; hidden beneath another layer of paint and scrubbing of slaves.

It’s a well-constructed lie that lets them believe everything and all is alright (it’s not). 

The city glows brighter than the sun (as bright as it will under Nero; cold hearted Nero who rips the city apart with his own hands) and not even the cries of agony and pain can dim the sight before him. 

His horse backs up from the heat that reaches miles and miles outside the city boarders and makes a noise he pays no attention to. The smoke curls up and into the air, a warning sign for anyone around them (even if for most it’s too late). 

Everything around him seems to fade away in comparison to the image of (powerful, mighty, bloodthirsty) Rome turning to ash.

The emperor is gone and with him the soldiers and generals have left. All that is left is idle aristocrats, workmen that have no backs left from all work and slaves that don’t deserve to burn for crimes and sins they did not commit. It is too late, Ross knows, but he wishes it could’ve been different for them (for him). 

There is a mother with her son who comes to him and asks him for help. Not help to save Rome, he sees it in her eyes. Her eyes express everything and all that she feels about Rome and Ross can see that the city has been as much her prison as it had been his.

Her clothes spell out an unknown story and the lines on her face tell a history he won’t be told in words. She’s a slave, that much is clear, but all Ross can see is a woman who has scars across her temple, but somehow still manages to act like a protective pillar between him and her teenage son. 

He sees a desperate woman who is trying hard not to show her desperation, her fear and frustration; he sees it anyway, in the line of her shoulders and how she holds herself. And while he doesn’t know (but hopes) if his horse will be able to carry three people, he still tells them to get on. 

The woman is nervous. He sees it when she gets on and he feels it in the way she trembles slightly, soft shocks; trembling fingers, while leaning against his back. She taps her fingers against her own thighs, but he can feel the vibration and Ross understands the feeling so he bites his tongue when she actually asks the questions burning on her own. 

She wonders why he isn’t leaving, why he has to cast his shadow across the city while it burns (smolders to the ground; turning into heaps of ashes and piles burnt bodies). He doesn’t tell her he needs to see it burn with his own eyes, for it to be real; he merely looks up and grins. It’s a wolfish grin that would set Lupa to shame and she seems to understand, nods her head, but doesn’t say the questions he sees in her face.

She nods her head like she knows the hunger (the pure desperation) that has been growing inside the pit of his stomach for years, increasing with every second spent between cooling bodies and cruel smiles. 

The woman nods again, her fingers tapping against her thighs faster now, like she understands how it is to want to escape (leave behind everything in your dust) and somehow he doesn’t doubt that she does. 

The wind messes up his hair as much as it can with his military cut, but he can’t find it in himself to mind as it blows the freedom into his lungs. He can hear the woman’s son laugh behind him louder than he can hear his own mind scream at him in fear and never ending anxiety. He can’t stop the bubbling laugh that breaches his own lips, but it gets lost in the wind as if he never let it pass. 

A small hand places itself onto his shoulder and the woman smiles at him (because she knows and understands). He nods and for a moment he lets himself smile. 

He never once thought he would flee Rome with child laughter as the tune to his very own victory song. 

+

Ross doesn’t ask questions and in return he doesn’t get asked any either. 

It’s a comfortable silence, the first in years, that the three of them share. They run into no one and it’s like the gods have granted them a small blessing, while they in all their godly grace, cursed him in the same breath. 

He worries his lip, because with the absence of anything (anything at all) that could pose as a threat; he’s faced with the hard reality, that it isn’t any enemies he’s actually worried about.

+

The woman tells him they will get off when they get to the coast. He wants to say something (anything at all), but he just nods, because he understands. 

Athens is calling for her, he sees it in her eyes and the curve of her nose. Her skin is an olive color and her hair is braided in a way that Romans aren’t accustomed to. He understands that when she looks at the water and the waves that she longs for the infamous city across the sea (her home). 

He says nothing when they get off and he doesn’t know why he wants to stop them. He doesn’t know them (but she had understood). 

It tugs at his heart a little when the child laughter is no longer there to accompany him through the wind, but Ross understands so he bites his tongue and keeps going.

+

Sometimes he wonders if the woman has made it with her son, to Athens. He wonders if Neptune had been merciful and let them pass without any trouble. He supposes, when he watches the waves safely from the coast line, that the woman would have prayed to Poseidon instead of his god (and asked him to please let them come home, please). 

Somehow he thinks that perhaps Greek gods are more forgiving than their Roman counterparts, somehow he doubts it. 

+

His breath is labored and he curses every god he knows as the rain falls from the sky. His horse protests weakly and he gets off it swiftly. It has been nothing, but good to him the last couple of weeks and he knows it deserves its rest. 

He watches the water droplets fall from the sky and cover the ground. They turn the earth dark and the thunder makes him jump when it falls on his ears and fills the sky. He doesn’t dare to curse Jupiter, but he still wants to when he darts beneath some trees for cover. 

He can hear his father whisper how the trees attract the unforgiving lightning of the king of gods, but his father hasn’t been a father to him for a long time now so he doesn’t move. He stands beneath a few branches, watches the rains and wonders when it will stop.

(He isn’t quite sure if he’s talking about the rain or his journey that has no destination). 

+

His horse’s name is Artemis and people have called him foolish for naming the animal it. They would frown upon him, mutter: ‘Greacus’ or correct him: ‘Diana’. He laughs as he never tells them it means ‘safe and sound’, it wouldn’t be such a Roman thing to say after all. 

+

His appearance is everything the empire wants to make her enemies believe. His hair is short; clean cut; practical. His face graces three scars across the left cheek and two on his neck; dangerous. His armor is light, but protective; deadly. The long blade at his side is what really seals the deal, silver, glinting, able to slice of a head of a god; proud. Practical, dangerous, deadly and proud; Roman. 

His mind is everything that puts the empire to shame, but lights up the cities of Greece. He has read more of Homer than of Cicero and the shame burnt on his father’s cheeks long after he stopped talking to him. The stories in Greek history come alive in love, desperation and thrilling terror, but in Roman history they are nothing but a massacre leaving behind families and cities; shattered and broken. 

He has chosen his side. 

+

Ross meets a young man who reminds him of a teenage boy when he laughs too loudly after too much wine; too many glasses of dark liquid, he seems to want to drown himself in. 

In a drunken stupor the stranger half hangs off him and tells him the story of how his mother drowned in the sea (the same sea she’d always loved, the man claims). He cries about how Poseidon has taken everything he loved, but had been cruel enough to leave him around and alive to suffer. 

People look up when he mentions the god, some whisper ‘Greacus’ beneath their breath and Ross wraps his hand around the other’s bicep. He squeezes lightly and while everything inside of him protests, he says, ‘Neptune’. 

+

The man sticks around and he tells him that his name is Alexandros. He says it when he stares across the river that they have stumbled upon. He says it as he looks into the water and sees something that Ross doesn’t (cannot imagine). He sits down beside him and he dips his hands into the stream. 

Ross lays back, stretches his legs and says, ‘to defend and help’. Alexandros looks at him and nods. It is a start to something that Ross cannot really describe, but he doesn’t feel the need to do so. 

+

Sitting beside Alexandros, when they’ve found a river, has become a ritual for Ross after months of travelling together. There are always questions coming from him and Ross never tells him to quiet down. His curious questions, asked in genuine interest, are the only reason why he knows so much about him now. 

Alexandros sits at another river bank and throws a rock at the water. Ross doesn’t know or see what he’s trying to hit from afar, but he notices that when he has sat down next to him that there isn’t really anything for him to hit. And for the first time Ross can see the frustration in the line of his shoulders; the gritting of his teeth.

Alexandros only stops when Ross puts a hand on his arm. The muscles in his arm bunch when he drops the stone into the stream and they both watch it sink to the bottom until the murky water takes the stone away from their sight.

Ross has been told by the other that he has no admiration for poets, but when he twists around and whispers, ‘Your heart doesn’t hold the beasts of Rome’, Ross think he could’ve been one. 

+

Another day and another stream later and Alexandros presses his palm against Ross’ chest. His fingers are spread apart and dig into the skin slightly and Ross’ heart thuds. A slow, but steady beat of thud, thud, thud. He nods to himself and tells the other that his heart beats like lions that have never been tamed by a master.

Ross nods, he knows what he means. Rome hadn’t tamed him in time. 

He wants to say something in return (with gestures or words), but nothing rolls off his tongue, even when he has opened his mouth. So without thinking about it, he leans in and presses his lips to the other’s cheek (it’s the first time in years he lets himself do something like that – but he doesn’t regret it). 

+

The first real kiss they share is after a mob of bandits has stripped them of everything. Ross can’t move his arm and he understands now more than ever, why his generals had always talked about strength in numbers. How they had always spoken about taking the enemy by waves and waves of trained soldiers and it’s a bitter defeat.

He grits his teeth and pressed fingers to a wound slashed across his side. And then Alexandros is there (he always is) and replaces Ross’ hand with his own. There’s something unnerving about seeing the other’s hands stained with crimson, but he doesn’t say anything. 

It’s then that Alexandros looks up and just leans in. It isn’t a heated kiss, but it spreads a warmth through his body and for a mere second he doesn’t feel the pain ripple through his body like waves. 

+

It takes them two full years to reach Athens and by that time Ross’ Greek is slightly better than before. 

Alexandros manages to remember most of his mother tongue, but at certain spots and patches, it’s dodgy and leaves them fumbling for syllables and letters. However, they manage (somehow) and don’t even notice when their conversation switch from Latin to Greek almost as easily as the ocean laps away at the boat they travel on. 

+

The wine is overflowing in Athens and Ross feels more at home there, than he has ever in Rome. Yet he’s no fool and he can, even here, see the blood staining the pillars as they walk past. He can feel the grief that has been left behind from times of war. 

But… but now there’s peace and he cherishes it, as all he’s ever known is war. 

+

The wine makes Alexandros’ lips loose and it has been close to three years when he finally speaks of his mother again. He leans over the counter of the tavern and looks the man serving them drinks in the eye. Ross wants to stop him but he’s already speaking loudly and gesturing with his hands grandly before he can interfere. 

Alexandros makes a motion with his left hand and exclaims, ‘Neptune took her! Neptune took her!’ Ross clasps his moving hand between his own and without looking around (because he doesn’t need to look to know they’re staring at them and whispering ‘Romanus’ underneath their breaths) and shakes his head slowly. 

Ross taps the other’s cheek and, with no protest being sung in his chest this time, corrects him, ‘Poseidon’.

+

Alexandros is breaking. Ross knows, but he doesn’t know what to say, yet he can see it. He watches as small cracks beneath the other’s bravo begin to appear and he observes the other as he lets his legs dangle in the air and off the cliff. 

He doesn’t know what it is or how to fix it and Ross is scared. He can feel the want to escape beneath the other’s skin as he lets his hands skim along arms and across his features. The same want, the same pure desperation, that he knows so well.

Alexandros says nothing, but they both know it. Ross presses his palm against Alexandros’ chest and whispers, muffled by the way he has his mouth pressed against the man’s skin, ‘every bird will fly some time, Alex’. 

Alexandros is breaking and Ross doesn’t know how to fix it or hold him together, but he tries. He tries with words and whispers into the night. He attempts with careful hugs (as if not to shatter him further) and touches that cover every inch of his skin. 

Ross tries, but he doesn’t know if it’s enough. 

+

It isn’t.

+

Ross screams ‘Alexandros’ but thinks ‘Icarus’ as he sees his body disappear from view. 

He watches, helplessly, as Alexandros throws himself to the waves. His arms stretched wide and his span is wider than his own height as Alexandros takes three steps and jumps from the cliff. Ross watches him fall, sees the grin on his face and knows he cannot be saved. 

He retrieves Alexandros from the beach as soon as the ocean delivers him back to him. He’s lost as to why he’s being left behind, but he knows that somewhere a son and a mother are united (it’s a small comfort but it is one none the less). 

And Ross thinks of child laughter carrying him through the wind as the ocean makes the air brush around him. He knows one difference between Alexandros and Icarus and it burns as bright as the sun; Alexandros didn’t even try and fly 

+

(Or maybe he’d tried too much and was finally done with not succeeding). 

+

He leaves Athens the day after and brings with him an urn and a bag. 

+

Ross becomes known in Greece. 

Not as a war seeker from Rome, but as a smith from across the waters (and the one who lost his companion to Poseidon). When he’s asked which Greek city he hails from, he just grins (the one that would put Lupa to shame) and tells them his prices. He’s never asked again. 

+

The first Latin he speaks in years is when a woman rushes into his shop and screams at him, ‘the Romans are here to seek war, the men need weapons!’. Ross wants to act surprised, but he isn’t, not really. 

The Romans are that way; he knows better than most. 

The woman is too late and he can hear the drum of the familiar march of Roman soldiers outside of his shop just two minutes after she arrived. He digs his fingernails into his palms and he leaves bloody crescents behind when he withdraws. 

‘‘Ex causa Romam incendit.’’ The Latin tastes foreign on his tongue, makes him think of the way his father used to pronounce the ‘x’ and how his mother never said the ‘t’. 

The soldiers, however, can’t hear him through the wooden walls and it’s the only reason why he keeps his head. 

(The Romans are that way; he knows better than most). 

+

The soldiers aren’t surprised to see him and Ross knows it’s because he fits in perfectly fine with the background of a small shop in a Greek capital. 

Alexandros had told him (a sharp twist in his gut) that with the braids in his, now longer, hair, he seemed even more Greek than Alexandros himself. It’d been a lie, Ross had known it then and knows it right in that moment, but he’d let Alexandros (a stab in his chest) braid his hair anyway. 

To the Roman soldiers he’s just another Greacus and Ross can’t help but laugh at that. 

+

He speaks their language, but yet he doesn’t. His Latin is slightly rusty on his tongue, but the familiarity comes to him with every sentence he speaks. 

Yet he doesn’t carry himself as a Roman. His aura isn’t one of those devoted to the empire and his pleads fall on deaf ears. 

He isn’t surprised. 

+

Ross’ hands get bound behind his back and the robe rubs against his skin while he struggles against the restrains. 

Rome is rebuilt, he notices. And while he expects to see the blood stains still there in his mind’s eye, they still somehow manage to make him gag.

He returns to Rome as a slave and he isn’t surprised.

+

The emperor’s name is Nero now. 

+

Rome burns the day he dies. 

There’s panic flaring up all around him and the smoke reaches his nostrils before the fire can even infiltrate his line of sight. The men at his left side scream and try their best to look for an escape, the women at his right side try to stay calm and the children cry softly. 

Ross just stays back, watches Rome burn through a hole, that one of the man made in the door of the shed, and doesn’t attempt to inhale the night air.

(All he can think is; ‘this is how the gods want it to be’ and ‘I’ll see you soon’).

+

The shed is empty around him and while some have tried to pull him along, they gave up as soon as they saw him shake his head and dig his heels into the dirt. 

He stands on the heated dirt beneath his feet and the flames lap at the wood like the ocean would do to the coast; boat.

Ross spreads his arms, with his fingers catching air and nothing else, and he closes his eyes and thinks, ‘I’m going to fly.’

**Author's Note:**

> > the title is from the roman saying: 'flamma fumo est proxima'; literally meaning something along the lines of 'where smoke is, flames are close', which is basically the ancient variant of 'where there's smoke, there's fire' 
> 
> > 'ex causa Romam incendit' is literally translated to something like 'from the reason rome burnt', but should be read as like 'this is why rome burnt'
> 
> > 'alexandros' means 'to defend/help' which is why ross says that to him at one point 
> 
> > all the foreshadowing towards another fire is meant to represent the great fire of rome 
> 
> hope you enjoyed !! & thank you for reading !!


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